


Ciotóg

by LaSordide



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Romance, Smut, Snogging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1823383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaSordide/pseuds/LaSordide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kieren’s honestly not sure which he thinks is worse: the active hate and the witch hunts were the devil the Rotters of Roarton knew. This strange quiet, though – it’s not completely trustworthy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ciotóg

Fifteen long months after Amy’s second death, and the level of active hysteria over the presence of people with PDS in the village has finally died down.

 

The ULA scattered after the Second Rising flopped, and good riddance to them; Kieren always thought they were mainly a pack of wankers, punters and normals whose only claim to fame was being undead.

 

Maxine and her Victus Party preaching and the resulting martial law sure were fun for a bit – perked the villagers right up for a few months, there. But that’s tapered off as well, and she’s gone back to wherever the hell she came from.

 

Left in their wake is a kind of chilly, eerie détente in the town. Kieren’s honestly not sure which he thinks is worse: the active hate and the witch hunts were the devil the Rotters of Roarton knew. This strange quiet, though – it’s not completely trustworthy.

 

Maybe he’s just being paranoid. Kieren knows Roartoners are creatures of habit at the core: desperate to go back to gardening, complaining about the price of lemons, and occasionally terrorizing the recently emigrated after a football match and too many Bulmers.

 

He figures people are just tired, mainly. Too much change, too much crazy, particularly for such a small town.

 

Summer has come round to Roarton, at least. That’s an unequivocal plus.

 

Kieren stretches out on the blanket he’s brought to the field he likes to meet Simon at after work when it’s nice out. The warmth of the sun hits his pallid face, raising his body temperature to the current ambient 21 C.

 

He strokes his right hand through the long grass like hair next to him, noting the places he can feel its touch and the places he can’t: the tips of his index and middle fingers and the root of his thumb tingle, and there’s some sensation on the area near his knuckles. He can also feel certain areas on his face and neck, his front. Nothing on his legs as of yet.

 

It’s definitely coming back, or changing at the very least, albeit at a snail’s pace, and not without occasional side effects – weird pins and needles sensations have been intermittent, and sometimes your run-of-the-mill excruciating shooting pains ensue.

 

Growth is intended to be painful, apparently. What a surprise.

 

Thank god for the internet, though. They’ve got an instant community of people with PDS all over the UK and Ireland reporting similar increases in sensation. And there’s been lots of intersections with other groups of people with chronic, degenerative, and painful conditions – mainly the MS and AIDS crowd – who have stepped up with help and suggestions, both in terms of medical and political possibilities. And that’s been absolutely lovely.

 

Simon’s started to feel some of the same resurgence of sensation, but in different areas of his body – his belly, his scalp, and, unfortunately, his back. No one’s totally sure why yet, but apparently their continued use of the Neurotryptiline is helping.

 

Increasingly, Kieren muses, it’s been beneficial to some rather delightful ends. He smiles automatically at the thought.

 

He’s totally new to sex anyway, but – he can’t imagine he and Simon would have maintained this strange, slow courtship without the advent of PDS and its physical complications. They’ve technically been lovers for about two years now, but being able to physically consummate any kind of sex has only really been possible for them for the past couple of weeks.

 

It’s been a fucking revelation for them, Kieren thinks - no pun intended.

 

He checks the time - it’s nearly half three by the clock on his phone. Simon gets off work at the library at Uni Lancaster at 3, catches the 3:15 train back to Roarton, and is generally home by 3:35. Kieren sent him a text earlier telling him where he’d be, lazing in tall grass on the hillock overlooking the canal and the Baxter’s farm.

 

So he closes his eyes and drifts for a few moments, contentedly listening to the birds sing in the trees and the wind blow through the grasses. Soon enough, he hears Simon’s heavy footfalls on the road, trudging through the grass, and then – maybe his favorite moment of the day – feels the warmth of the sun get replaced by the warmth of Simon’s face as he lays down on the blanket next to Kieren and kisses him hello.

 

“Hey, beautiful,” Simon whispers.

 

Kieren opens his white eyes and smiles at him, then rolls onto his side and pulls him closer for a deeper kiss. Simon groans happily when Kieren grabs his left ass cheek, pulls him pelvis-to-pelvis, and inserts a slim leg between his thighs.

 

This spot is practically meant for snogging – the closest neighbors’ house is maybe half a kilometer away, they’re shielded from the road by the hill, and the grass so high by this time of year you’d have to be in a helicopter or standing right next to them to see them.

 

“Been thinking bout me, then?” he asks, disentangling himself from his laptop bag.

 

“All day,” Kieren responds honestly. “How was work?”

 

“The usual,” Simon says. “Set this Rotter with atypical paroxysmal neuralgia up with the latest research on nucleoside analogues in the BMJ; introduced this other Rotter to the local pariah scene in Lancaster. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.” He shrugs nonchalantly, but his face is smug.

 

“So, just the everyday brilliant and heroic interconnections you make for the PDS community. Got it.” Kieren smiles at him proudly.

 

He knows how Simon feels about his job as a library assistant at the University’s graduate library. The place had been bequeathed a huge gift in the 90s by a wealthy alumnus who died of AIDS in 1989 with the stipulation that a specialty library, accessible to all, be built. It was to be a repository for literature about Queer identity, the AIDS crisis, and related subjects, with an endowed position for a head librarian.

 

That librarian – James Macallum, a slender, fortyish married gay man from Glasgow with piercing blue eyes and shaggy auburn hair – had jumped at the chance in 2013 to expand the library’s mission to include PDS history, noting the similarities in their struggle with those of people with AIDS. Five months ago he created a position for an assistant, subsequently met Simon speaking at a PDS rights rally in town, and gave him his card. The two conversed about theory and politics via email for several weeks, James scoping Simon out for the job the entire time. And then James suggested Simon apply for the position. Simon demurred at first, citing his lack of an undergraduate degree, but – James hired him for the position as soon as he received Simon’s application, rightly sensing Simon’s forthrightness, his intersectionality as a gay man with PDS and as a fellow Gael in England, and, above all, his desire simply to _help_.

 

It’s given Simon a new lease on his second life, Kieren’s noticed – he’s become useful to their community in a bigger way then he was when he was part of the ULA. He’s been happier, too. Kieren’s been gently prodding Simon to consider matriculating at UL, maybe even go on to a graduate degree, ever since.

 

“I could not have done it without you, my love,” Simon tells him.

 

Kieren scoffs, “Yeah, yeah –“ he starts, but Simon cuts him off.

 

“No. It’s truth,” he mildly reproves. “You push me in good ways, Kier. You’re _good_ for me.”

 

“You push yourself just fine,” Kieren whispers, carding his feeling hand through Simon’s thick pitch hair, paying specific attention to the patches of skin he knows Simon can feel best.

 

Simon drops his eyes and gets that familiar broody, contemplative look on his face then. Kieren knows it like the back of his hand, can see Simon has always struggled with depression, _will_ always struggle with it, even though they’ve only known one another for two years – and that those two years have been among the happiest in Simon’s short life. He’s gotten a bit used to happy Simon in the past few months especially, however.

 

“Hey,” Kieren says, forcing Simon to look at him again. “Sorry – I said something wrong.”

 

Simon gives a quick shake of his head and frowns, drops his gaze again, starts messing vaguely with the fringe on their old plaid blanket.

 

“Talk to me?” Kieren tells him. “Please?”

 

“You –“ Simon starts. Kieren can see him try to push the words out and waits.

 

“You’ve no idea,” he finally manages. “I’ve absolutely always been _wanting_.” He spits the word out as though it were ashes.

 

“I’m hearing you,” Kieren says carefully, “but I don’t understand.”  
  
“I’ve always been _ciotóg_ , Kier – fucking _queer_ , in all the ways that can be intended, yeah?” Kieren notices how very scared Simon is all of a sudden - he’s got a death grip on Kieren’s old flannel shirt where his hand rests at Kieren’s ribs, a place Kieren can actually kind of feel.

 

“But you,” he kisses Kieren’s forehead, then collapses on him, burying his face in his chest, “you love me, and care for me, and you push me to be my best, and you nurture me, regardless. And for that I am utterly thankful.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Kieren replies, “turns out I’m big into – um, that. _Ciotóg._ OK? So you needn’t worry about these things, Mr. Monroe.” He knows full well Simon busts out the Irish for what Kieren thinks of as _heavy subjects_ by now.

 

“I might be, you know, a little _ciotóg_ myself.”

 

And then Kieren starts to laugh, thinking about that. He can’t help it. Fucking _ciotóg_ , my God – whatever the fuck that actually even means, Kieren will have to look it up on the bloody internet when they get home because God only knows what kind of bizarre Irish concept this one is, the cultural learning curve in this relationship is positively _steep_ \- how could Simon possibly think he’d be alone in it when he’s got Kieren, anyway?

 

He can feel Simon’s body quaking with laughter, too, though possibly for different reasons.

 

And then Simon sits up abruptly and starts unbuttoning his white work shirt, pulling it and his vest over his head.

 

“What’re you doing?” Kieren whispers, wide-eyed, watching him.

 

“Make love to me,” Simon says, but in the most lascivious way possible. His pants go the way of his shirt and his shoes, and then there he is on a blanket just off the road completely naked in front of God and England and everyone, his pale skin shining like marble in the sunlight. He grins at the shocked look on Kieren’s face, nods at the erection in Kieren’s pants, “C’mon c’mon c’mon,” he chides. “I can see you want to.”

 

“We’re in the middle of town – “

 

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, Kieren,” Simon counters. He gestues at the four foot tall grass all around them, the Baxter’s flock of sheep grazing in the distance, challenging Kieren to disagree. Eyebrows raised, he is a formidable, immoveable force.

 

He should say no, this is madness, but _Christ_ , Simon’s body is distracting.

 

“I haven’t got anything on me, though,” Kieren says, lamely – they could use spit, he supposes, maybe that’s how they did it in the old days, you know, historically, but that doesn’t really sound all that fun for anyone –

 

Simon produces a bottle of lube from his messenger bag, and Kieren looks at him in astonishment. “You walk around with a bottle of _lube_ in your briefcase? Should I be worried?”

 

Simon rolls his eyes at him. “Oh, ye of little faith - course not. I haven’t become some sort of undead serial public masturbator, for fuck’s sake,” he says, looking for all the world like he wants to tell Kieren off: _you know nothing, Jon Snow_. “I bought it on my way home after you texted me you’d be up here, stupid. _Hello, planning_?”

 

He chucks the little bottle at Kieren’s chest, stretches his hairy legs open, and lays back languidly on the blanket, grinning. “My body is ready,” Simon chuckles, indicating his erection. “Have at it, boy-o.”

 

Kieren looks around nervously once – _once_ – and gets to work.


End file.
